Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“There has been a miscalculation,” said Box.

Chapra waited. She was getting used to Box’s conversational grenades. She watched, without really seeing, as a wedge of midnight entered realspace, opened ramscoop wings then stood on its tip on fusion fire, braking into the Haden system.

“The Separatist ship is here now,” Box told them.

With a flash the projection disappeared and in the same moment the ship shuddered. Chapra clutched at her chair as she felt the gravity shift. Something was out. She could feel the surge as the ship changed direction. A sudden dragging force. An explosion.

“Shuttle in bay six is ready for launch,” said Box.

Chapra clutched her chair. So, why did she need to know that?

“Come on!” Abaron yelled, grabbing her arm. Then it all hit home. They were being attacked. The Schrödinger’s Box was being destroyed. She stood and ran with Abaron to bay six. The gravity kept fluctuating and the way they ran might have appeared comical at any other time, anywhere else. Great hollow booms echoed from deep in the ship, and she heard distant clangs of metal falling. Chapra felt changes in pressure. Her ears popped, which was terror for anyone who knew space. Hull breach. They reached the irised hatch to bay six. It was firmly closed and would not open on command nor at the controls.

“Box!” Abaron yelled.

Chapra shook her head. This was happening, this was real, she had to accept it. She turned. In the corridor; a shape moving very fast. It was Rhys carrying the girl under his arm. The Golem jerked to an abrupt halt by them and released the girl. She reached out and grabbed Chapra’s hand.

“Step away from the door,” said Rhys, and raised his singun. The weapon made no sound. A fleck of black appeared in the centre of the door and the door screamed as it folded; a sheet of paper crumpled by a fist. Then the door, now a wrinkled ovoid of metal, thumped to the floor. Rhys held out the gun to Abaron. “Here,” he said. Abaron shook his head. Rhys handed it to Chapra. The butt felt slick and the gun was heavy. It was horribly real.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

The Golem grinned at her and fled away down a corridor that now seemed to be twisting, splitting. More explosions. They ran into the huge bay and gaped out through a shimmer-shield at a passing vast shape, and the burning of hellish fires. The shuttle crouched like an iron sparrow hiding from the raptor outside. Abaron opened the door. Inside, the girl refused Chapra’s help and strapped herself in. Chapra dropped the gun into a wall pouch. Abaron stared at the controls, his hands clenching and unclenching. Chapra pushed him aside and sat in the pilot’s chair. He took the one next to it. As they strapped in, something crashed and violet fire flared to one side of the bay. The shuttle began to slide down a tilted gravity field.

“Now!” screamed Abaron.

Chapra used override to knock out the shimmer-shield. The bay full of air exploded into vacuum, sucking the shuttle out into a Dante night. The acceleration slammed the three of them back into their seats and something went crashing down in the back of the shuttle. Chapra reached and grabbed the control column and using booster steering wrenched the shuttle in the opposite direction from that passing shape. Wreckage was spewing across space, fragments and molten metal, nebulous sheets of fire with no gravity to give them shape, then clear space. Chapra ignited the shuttle’s small but powerful ionic drive. The huge wedge and the fragmenting Box fled behind them. She adjusted their course as now there was only one place to hide. The moons in the system were too small and the only other planet was no option at all it being a gas giant. Chapra tapped controls and one half of the screen showed a reverse view. The wedge was close to the Box, enfilading it with missiles. It wasn’t using lasers on the big ship, nor particle weapons. Missiles were much less wasteful of energy, and much more destructive. Chapra was immediately reminded of the PSR chopping up the sphere of ice in which the Jain had slept. This looked almost surgical — what they saw of it before the screen whited-out.

“What was that?” asked Abaron.

“Laser. Burnt out all our external coms,” said Chapra. She kept the acceleration on and checked a reading from the radar, which did not have enough of its delicate parts outside to be wiped out. Two shapes were accelerating after them. She only hoped they would not have the fuel to sustain that acceleration.

“Smart missiles,” said Abaron, his face white and beaded with sweat.

“Yes.”

They sat in silence watching the trace from the missiles grow stronger, then strong enough for them to see the shape and smooth beauty of these clever weapons. They were close. Chapra was white-knuckling the throttle for the ion drive. There was no way to get anything more out of it. Five wracked-out minutes passed before they realised the missiles were getting no closer.

“How long can we keep this up?” asked Abaron.

“Not much longer. We have to decelerate for the planet.”

“If we do that they’ll get us.”

Chapra nodded and from the instrument readings did a high-speed calculation in her head. In twenty minutes they must begin to decelerate or they would not be able to go into orbit. Not landing was out of the question because there just was not enough fuel for them to keep on running until the Cable Hogue arrived. She realised she had no answers. Unless the missiles ran out of fuel they were dead.

“What do we do?” asked Abaron, obviously willing to defer to her authority. Chapra was about to tell him she did not know, but suddenly she did.

“This shuttle and the missiles are both at maximum acceleration,” she said. She looked at him. “Do you think you can handle the controls. Delicately?”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“On my signal I want you to reduce our acceleration and bring the missiles in as close as you can. Fifty metres. Less if you think you can do it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Those missiles are probably the same as are being fired at the Box — hull piercers. Detonating them that close to us shouldn’t do us any harm.”

“How do you know that?” he asked dully.

“I’m old. I did other jobs before I studied xenology,” she said.

“How are you going to detonate them?”

Chapra smiled at him, a little crazily, she thought, as she clamped down on that smile. “I’m going to shoot them with the singun.”

Chapra got out of the pilot’s chair and Abaron took over the controls. She went back into the main cabin where the girl watched her intently as she donned a spacesuit. The singun was heavy and she set its controls to the maximum. The singularity would last a full three seconds with each shot. She stepped into the airlock, attached a safety line, then over the suit com said, “I’m going out there now. Start reducing acceleration — gently — in about a minute.”

Out of the artificial gravity of the shuttle Chapra felt the tug of acceleration. It felt to her as if she was leaning out the window of a tower and looking down into fire and darkness. Holding tightly to the singun she rested her arms down the hull and aimed beyond the ionic glare of the shuttle’s engines. Acceleration dropped, then dropped again. Two silvery nubs rose up out of the darkness. She aimed at them and saw the range-finder on the gun going crazy as the ionic halo confused it. She fired and fired again, black bars cut through the glare. She swore, aimed carefully, fired a third time. Her visor polarised. One missile disappeared in a brief flash and the other missile tumbled away. Chapra quickly pulled herself back inside. Her arms and face were burning and she wondered just how many rads she had taken. Inside the shuttle and out of the suit, Chapra rubbed emollient cream on her face. Her arms had been heated inside the suit, but had not burned. She reckoned her face would peel, though funnily enough, the skin under her caste mark was unburned.